When the five-star Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland set out to design a fitness center that would appeal to its next generation of guests, its designers didn’t look to the future. Instead, they turned to the past — specifically, a Slim Aarons photograph titled “Tennis in the Bahamas, 1957.” The result is the Gleneagles Sporting Club, a retro, luxurious sports facility with ample courts, equestrian stables and a courtside lounge space.
Inspired by the iconic tennis and sporting clubs of the late 1800s and mid-1900s, spaces that were meant just as much for socializing as they were for exercise, the Gleneagles Sporting Club is part of a new wave of fitness centers that combine aspects of members clubs and gymnasiums under one roof.
Playing on the nostalgia for country clubs and Ivy League-coded preppiness, these athletic spaces are sharply veering away from the sleek aesthetics pioneered by fitness chains like Equinox.
For some, the shift is as subtle as a font change and some new merchandise. Last month, Blink Fitness, a budget gym chain, released a sweatshirt with 1980s-style script and “club” added to the end of its name. Others have gone further, building entire brands meant to evoke a vintage feel and even investing in period-era equipment.
“I wanted to bring in the spirit of the old gymnasiums, because I loved the type of equipment that they had and their focus on the actual design and how intricate it was,” said Lev Glazman, a co-founder of the Maker Gymnasium, a 2,700-square-foot gym attached to the Maker Hotel in Hudson, N.Y.
